Since 1975, nearly 8,000 people have been convicted of marijuana-related crimes in San Francisco. But, now that pot is legal in California, D.A. George Gascon says those convictions no longer make sense.

"I believe that, long ago, we lost our ability to distinguish the dangerous from the nuisance and it has broken our pocketbooks and the fabric of many of our communities and we have not been any safer for it," Gascon said.

Gascon announced Wednesday that more than 3,000 misdemeanor pot convictions would be reversed and the defendants records expunged. And nearly 5,000 felonies would be re-examined to see if they could be thrown out.